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vikdk
Joined: 25 Jun 2003
Posts: 1676
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 Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2006 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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| while unhappy ones will always go public in order to garner some commiseration from fellow foreigners. |
Just been reading your posts from the past, Rog - you often sound very unhappy - my commiserations old chap 
By the way Rog - some of your experiences with recruiters would be fun to read |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 2:00 am Post subject: |
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| vikdk wrote: |
| why you so shy about your past Clark? Id love to know about these good/bad experiences - would really help me if i ever had to look for a recruiter - how can we learn from you if you don't share your front-line experience |
Yeah right vikdk! So your interest in my personal experiences is purely to further your own understanding of recruiters!
Sorry mate, it is clear to me that you are not at all interested in my experiences but are just looking for dirt in your ever ending efforts to attempt to discredit me because I have disagreed with you in the past.
Here's a novel idea vikdk, rather than concentrating so heavily on what others post, why not start the ball rolling yourself and actually post some information of your own. Yes, people on this forum may disagree with you, and yes they may challenge you based upon what you write, but don't be afraid of that. Surely if your real interest in participating in this forum is to help foreign teachers then actually posting something with content would be far more beneficial than your usual attempts at wit.
For anyone who has a genuine interest in my positive experiences with recruiters I welcome you to PM me. I have already listed the names of the companies that I would recommend on this thread.
Now vikdk let me point out again something from your own posts:
| vikdk wrote: |
| Do you use them when finding a job? Have you ever used them? This is the kind of frontline info that validates your advice and opinions |
| vikdk wrote: |
| Alas I have never used a recruiter |
So from your own opinion your own posts within this thread are 'invalid'.
So what is your point in continuing to post in this thread? You claim that it is in the interests of helping foreign teachers by bringing information to this forum so why not actually make an on topic post about trusted recruiters? If you have nothing to offer about the topic then why bother posting here. Clearly your role and intent here is to attempt to 'score points' against people who have questioned your advice in the past.
I can't wait to see your next quip  |
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vikdk
Joined: 25 Jun 2003
Posts: 1676
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 2:13 am Post subject: |
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| For anyone who has a genuine interest in my positive experiences with recruiters I welcome you to PM me. |
why in private Clark - I'm sure there are many here who have a genuine interest in your experiences with recruiters - why not tell us in the forum?
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| but are just looking for dirt |
dirt what dirt Clark - this is a forum about recruiting  |
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ytange
Joined: 09 Jan 2006
Posts: 105
Location: Bondi -maybe gotta move soon(ex NZ)
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 9:28 am Post subject: |
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why put your future in the hands of a recruiter anyway.
Yeh, I know they are gonna make a few bucks so they may see the advantages of this.
Why not trust yourself before you trust someone you dont know/
surely  |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 1:27 am Post subject: |
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| ytange wrote: |
why put your future in the hands of a recruiter anyway.
Yeh, I know they are gonna make a few bucks so they may see the advantages of this.
Why not trust yourself before you trust someone you dont know/
surely |
Of course the choice not to deal with a recruiter is a very valid one and many teachers do find jobs on their own directly with schools. Some of these teachers have very good experiences while others find themselves in the schools from hell.
That said, some teachers choose to use recruiters. They always have, and they no doubt always will. Considering this fact, rather than suggesting that teacher not deal with recruiters or that all recruiters are bad it seems that most teachers prefer to know which are the best and which are the worst recruiters here.
I assume from the title of this post that this individual has decided to go with a recruiter and therefore suggestions about the validity of recruiters in general is probably not very helpful advice.
I do have a question for you ytange. Assuming that a teacher has decided that he or she wants a job in a certain province. This teacher has hit the job boards with no real success. He or she notices during his job search that recruiters are offering reasonable positions in these areas. Now assuming of course that these are legitimate positions, what do you suggest that the teacher do if he or she is to follow your advice and ignore recruiters? I don't ask this question in spite. I am legitimately interested in hearing a response.
It seems to me that in the absence of securing a position with a school over the internet, the teacher could always come to China and try to find work here, but considering that the teacher is still looking for work at province level it would seem to be a huge feat to find work in this manner. Even at a city level I don't see that finding work on the ground is all that easy. I mean honestly how does this work? Do you approach foreigners in bars and ask them if they know of any jobs? I assume that you are suggesting that teachers walk into schools directly. But how do they find these schools? Most Chinese cities are sprawling places and for someone with no Chinese ability and no knowledge of where to go nor how to get there, the prospect of travelling around a city looking for work is a rather expensive and daunting one. I assume that the teacher could hire a taxi driver for the day, but even that is no guarantee that you will have any luck. Finally, even when you find schools and manage to communicate to the guards at the gate what you want, what are the real chances of the school actually having a position available when you need it?
In Taiwan arriving and looking for work is a valid option, but I don't see this being the case in China. Maybe in a handful of big cities this might work, but throughout most of China I don't see how it could work.
Has anyone here actually done this? How did you find it? |
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ytange
Joined: 09 Jan 2006
Posts: 105
Location: Bondi -maybe gotta move soon(ex NZ)
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 3:24 am Post subject: |
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Where did I (anyone) suggest just rocking up to a school 
Why suggest that as a real alternative to a paid recruiter?
Well, IF you cant get a job from all the 100's advertised all over the net, then you could use a recruiter .
But they can't guarantee things more than the school can, in fact probablly less
I replied to jobs ads, did net searches for the parts of China I was interested in (ie the south) and their colleges and uni.s
its all there on the net
crisp  |
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Roger
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
Posts: 9138
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:35 am Post subject: |
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| ytange wrote: |
Well, IF you cant get a job from all the 100's advertised all over the net, then you could use a recruiter .
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It may have escaped your critical mind that many of those advertisers, while hiding behind innocuous or school-affiliated addresses or monikers actually are recruiters a.k.a. agents.
We have discussed this in the past; the modus operandi of the majority of agents is simple: they work in or for a school, college or university; some are FAOs or just plain teachers, and since their Principal or Headmaster doesn't know the ropes of the recruiting game and/or is unable to communicate with foreign job applicants the FAO or teacher is used as a go-between. Eventually they end up marketing jobs from any would-be employer to FTs. You will notice this too if you pst your CV: those who contact you are most of the time agents! |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:02 am Post subject: |
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| ytange wrote: |
Where did I (anyone) suggest just rocking up to a school
Why suggest that as a real alternative to a paid recruiter? |
I don't suggest that as a viable alternative but others two. Two people in this very thread in fact, and I assumed that your post made a third hence my question.
| ytange wrote: |
| Well, IF you cant get a job from all the 100's advertised all over the net, then you could use a recruiter . |
Which is the exact point of this thread. This is why I questioned your earlier post in which you seem to suggest that dealing with recruiters is not a good idea. Now it seems that your point is that you prefer to deal with schools directly but in the absence of positions available through schools that a recruiter could be useful. It would have been more helpful has this been clearer in your earlier post.
| ytange wrote: |
| But they can't guarantee things more than the school can, in fact probablly less |
Of course they can't. But then neither can schools. My problem with all of this anti-recruiter stuff is that it gives the impression that schools are trustworthy and recruiters aren't. It seems clear to me that some entities are trustworthy while others aren't - regardless of whether that entity is called a school, a recruiter, or even a foreign teacher for that matter. |
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ytange
Joined: 09 Jan 2006
Posts: 105
Location: Bondi -maybe gotta move soon(ex NZ)
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:33 am Post subject: |
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| Roger wrote: |
| It may have escaped your critical mind that many of those advertisers, while hiding behind innocuous or school-affiliated addresses or monikers actually are recruiters a.k.a. agents. |
No I hasn't escaped my critical mind at all but sincere thanks for asking.
If recruiters (or teachers) want to lie or cheat, that's their problem but I have seen enough b/s in my time to spot it from a distance.
Seems to be bucket loads of it on both sides of the English teaching fence in China |
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ytange
Joined: 09 Jan 2006
Posts: 105
Location: Bondi -maybe gotta move soon(ex NZ)
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:37 am Post subject: |
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| clark.w.griswald wrote: |
| in the absence of positions ... |
What absence of positions?
Absence of money, sure... |
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vikdk
Joined: 25 Jun 2003
Posts: 1676
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:21 am Post subject: |
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| Of course the choice not to deal with a recruiter is a very valid one and many teachers do find jobs on their own directly with schools. Some of these teachers have very good experiences while others find themselves in the schools from hell. |
Clark as an FT, how do you prefer to find a job - did you find your first job through a recruiter? By the way Roger love to here on your history with recruiters aswell. |
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Roger
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
Posts: 9138
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 11:14 am Post subject: |
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[quote="vikdk"]
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| By the way Roger love to here on your history with recruiters aswell. |
Here are just a couple of examples:
I was contacted by a person writing from his office at a reputable Guangzhou university (some university prefixed with "South China..."). He wrote in excellent English and told me as an aside that he was teaching at that university.
The job he was offering me had nothing to do with that establishment, though; it was a part-time job in a training centre not in Guangzhou but in Foshan.
My first few weeks were stunningly successful and I got a new female admirer as well (who is now married to another guy and has a child). Then I was told they wanted to work me as much as possible throughout the week, but this would have interferred with my regular job. When that fulltime job came to an end I made myself available more of the time and they actually thought of hiring me as a fulltime employee.
The downside was, however, that I must from that time on be available from some time in the morning till some time in the late afternoon; if no teaching occurred then I was to be on stand-by in their office. In other words: a fulltimer works some 40 hours a week, up to 25 of which were contact hours.
While pay was commensurate, the hourly wages were by far more preferable. I was given no choice and bowed out after I was not paid for time wasted in their office without being made to teach due to mismanagement or misallocations of classes. I would like to add that they had next to no classes in their own premises; instead I had to travel to a number of public schools and kindergartens; the extra time I had to put in travelling to and fro was a major turn-off.
- I was contacted by phone about one year and a half ago; at the other end of the line was a man from some "education bureau". He had known my phone number for a while and had an urgent need for me right then. He introduced me to a woman who treated me and him to dinner in a restaurant nearby.
The woman seemed to like me and asked me to come for a trial lesson forthwith.
She happened to be the owner of a training centre housed in a public school but independent of it. A cosy arrangement as you can imagine.
I gave a trial lesson (for which she volunteered to pay) and it was a roaring success (because the kids were known to be rather rowdy, and it was my ability to maintain orderliness that impressed her the most).
She only spoke Chinese, so she left the details of my timetable to one of her subordinates who happened to be a Chinese English teacher.
The first few weeks were great for both sides but suddenly things changed for the worse. This was, perhaps, because that TC owner was not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of her school; the person she had put in that job was another expat who seemed to appear from out of the blue (but had been on the payroll of that school for several months).
He decided to modify my timetable and he imposed on me hardships that were sure to drive me mad - such as requiring me to arrive up to 2 hours early so that I could catch their company van for transport to another public school, failing to catch this van I would have to pay for a taxi out of my own funds.
That wasn't the worst; he also replaced one teacher with another, me with a Chinese, while I had to stand in for totally unknown people. This went on on an ad hoc basis for quite some time until I exploded and quit on the spot.
At least the woman had the decency of paying me in full. |
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vikdk
Joined: 25 Jun 2003
Posts: 1676
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Roger are the people you talk about recruiters - I always thought they were like middle men - set you up with an employer and get paid a fee. The contacts you talk about seem more like employers. |
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Roger
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
Posts: 9138
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:24 am Post subject: |
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| vikdk wrote: |
| Roger are the people you talk about recruiters - I always thought they were like middle men - set you up with an employer and get paid a fee. The contacts you talk about seem more like employers. |
Maybe you need a little reading help, vikdk!
The first contact person was a professor working out from his office at a Guangzhou university, and he was doing his job informally and without approval from his own superiors! He got paid a commission for introducing me to that training centre!
The second case is a little more complicated: the man introducing me to that training centre operator was a go-between who used his office in a public institution to chase after extra cash; whether that woman paid him a commission is unknown to me but I would suppose that yes, she did pay him!
What's more, she herself was not my legal employer. She only commanded my spare time, and booked those hours that suited her or her classes. She had no responsibility for my interests which included an interest in a steady income at predictable weekly hours and on specific days; no such promise was ever made. I had to come when she needed me.
And she acted as that agent that I mentioned before: the public schools paid her a decent fee for putting a foreign face in front of their students. She farmed me out. That's why I call her an "agent" too. And this is the modus operandi of a good many TCs. Some of their clients may be companies whose staff receive extra English tuition as a bonus.
If you think this differs from agents you know here is the next step some of them take: when they feel there are enough FTs seeking jobs they will release you to one of their clients and get a commission. Your service before you became their staff will count as "probation"; the agent himself will then peddle a new FT to other client schools until someone shows interest in keeping him or her. |
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vikdk
Joined: 25 Jun 2003
Posts: 1676
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:24 am Post subject: |
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maybe I should read more carefully - such a lot of info between the lines
How do they peddle you - can recruiters be written down as employer on your visa?
hope your friend Clark joins in with some info aswell |
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